Cables From The Diplomatic Frontlines - Belarus accumulates troops near Ukraine - playing risky games with Putin and the West.

Belarus accumulates troops: optics vs actual potential threat.

• A few weeks ago, Belarus began to amass tanks, special forces, regular troops, and Wagner mercenaries at the 674- long Ukraine border, the largest deployment since 2022.

• Belarus claims to have deployed nearly a third of its armed forces, approximately 20,000 troops, along the border.

• (side note: Belarus’s active duty army totals around 60,000 personnel, with combat units often manned at only 30-40% capacity, relying on mobilization for larger operations. There are also around 10k Russian troops still in Belarus.)

• The formal reason offered for this mobilization is the claim that Ukraine has amassed 120k troops near Belarus.

• This is of course a preposterous assertion.

• Ukraine is struggling to find spare troops to defend Pokrovsk, or to prop up its incursion into Kursk (where according to most open intel analysts it has around 10-15k troops) let alone amass 120k near Belarus…

• (side note: in reality Ukraine most likely has only a few thousand troops overseeing defensive fortifications to be able to stall and win time in case of another invasion from the north.)

• This is not enough to cause much threat to Ukraine overall, but together with Wagner mercenaries, their presence at the border will end up acting as a ‘‘fixing’’ operation - forcing Ukraine to hold troops to protect against its northern border.

• When it comes to their pure capacity, it is largely unknown - they are untested in actual battle.

• But we can say with strong confidence that they are going to lack the quality of the Russian troops - and after 2.5 years of this war, that is not really a very high bar.

• At most (and at their current numbers), any troops crossing into Ukraine would likely capture a few towns only - after the first attempt back in February 2022, Ukraine learned a valuable lesson and has dug trenches and fortifications (including bunkers and anti-tank defenses) along the border.

• Ukraine has transformed its northern border into a heavily fortified zone,

• It is thus unlikely that the troops currently amassed at the border could accomplish any meaningful gains.

• A significant territorial accomplishment (similar to that of Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk) would necessitate a significantly higher number of amassed troops.

• Clearly, Belarus doesn’t have a capacity for this, and so Russia would need to do this instead.

• But Russia has barely mustered 30k to redirect towards Kursk.

• It is unlikely to devote a very high number of troops to the Belarus-Ukraine border any time soon.

• Now, all of this is of course assuming that Lukashenko would even go ahead with an offensive operation and open a second front.

• Doing so would be incredibly foolish and could potentially end up costing him his regime.

• The question then becomes why - why would Lukashenko do any of this?

• What is he going to gain from all this?

• Let us unpack.

Lukashenko’s calculus.